It might be more meaningful to know what the preferred rebalance period is. When following the screens, we don't really have direct control over the holding period. My preferred holding period is more than 52 weeks.

I am somewhat confused by the question, only because I had asked for advice about annuals, and the concensus was that too much can go wrong in a year, and that either htd, or re-balancing monthly worked better.

I thought it was established that in mi, annuals just don't work very well.

E.g., Bill2M is currently telling me that 2012's most productive screens are 3pt_Relative_Value and RS-100. I will thus buy the top 4-5 stocks in those screens accordingly. I'm willing to hold onto equities that fall below the top 4 or 5, but will sell immediately if the stock falls off the screen, or falls to rank 15 or lower. (This latter decision is completely arbitrary.)

Early in a year, I'll use Bill2M's 52-week rankings to ascertain the most productive screens.

The approach may be a somewhat inexact science, but I'm comfortable w/ it, and the two accounts I use this strategy with are up ~33% YTD.

Needless to say, I'm profoundly indebted to Bill2M and LonghornBoy for their weekly updates.

2012's most productive screens are 3pt_Relative_Value and RS-100. I will thus buy the top 4-5 stocks in those screens accordingly. I'm willing to hold onto equities that fall below the top 4 or 5, but will sell immediately if the stock falls off the screen, or falls to rank 15 or lower....

Early in a year, I'll use Bill2M's 52-week rankings to ascertain the most productive screens.

The approach may be a somewhat inexact science, but I'm comfortable w/ it, and the two accounts I use this strategy with are up ~33% YTD.

Very nice YTD performance for simple long positions. Beats what I've done YTD by almost 20%. So, I'm envious.

My concern with a variable screen of screens approach is how it might work when the market declines. I quickly made lots of money doing something like this during the tech balloon, and then lost it even more rapidly when the bubble burst. That's purely anecdotal, of course, though I suspect I'm far from alone in this experience. If I were to engage in it now, I'd definitely factor in market timing. Very likely that would obviate much, though probably not all, of the downside.

However, as I'm now retired, MI isn't among my present strategies, which pursue deep value with a modicum of income. As these accommodate long-cycle expectations, they actually mitigate against jumping in and out of the market based even upon intermediate term pricing trends.

I'm sure many MI afficionados here can shed light on how to optimize a screen of screens. I'd be interested in knowing how they've been doing with it through thick and thin.

It might be more meaningful to know what the preferred rebalance period is. When following the screens, we don't really have direct control over the holding period...

FWIWBy jargon convention on the board, the "holding period" or trading cycle is the frequencywith which one checks the current picks and might trade based on the results.Hence, "monthly hold" normally means you check every month, not thatall your stocks are held for a month. In this context, the poll is asking how often you go check the picks to see whether there are trades to be done, not how long the average stock is held.

The average length of the holding period of a stock is of course very different;the same stock might get picked many months in a row or held till it drops in the ranks.

The rebalance period is different again, and rarely used, meaning thefrequency with which you equalize the sizes of your positions.You might check your picks monthly and not rebalance them when you sell old stuff and buy new stuff, or you might rebalance your position sizesmonthly and not consider changing any of the picks more often than quarterly.I almost never rebalance positions. Generally it's only when somethinghas been a huge winner and I want to take some of the profits.I generally use a 3 week hold (trading cycle), but my screens are often such that the picks don't change that frequently.

I recommend finding out what holding period (trading cycle length)works best for your screens using realistic trading costs on the GTR1backtester, then use a hold that's a week (or more) longer than that to allow for the inevitable overtuning. The returns in a backtest willalways be over-rosy, but the friction will be surprisingly accurate.Since the optimal holding period is a function of the two, the bestholding period in real life is longer than what seems best in backtest.